Afterall: Art, Context and Enquiry

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Charles Gaines was joined by Louis Hartnoll and John Tain to discuss ‘The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism’, an exhibition that foregrounded questions of structural racism by juxtaposing works by African-American artists with their reception in mainstream arts criticism

Maria Thereza Alves and Don Genaro Amaro Altamirano were joined by Ana Bilbao to discuss The Return of a Lake (2012), a work by Alves produced in collaboration with the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, Mexico.

Two landmark exhibitions in 1969, 'Op Losse Schroeven' and 'When Attitudes Become Form', publicly introduced the 'new art' of the 1960s. This book, the first in the Exhibition Histories series, reveals how each brought together Arte Povera, Conceptual and Land art whilst introducing new curatorial approaches.

The second book in Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series focuses on the third edition of the Bienal de La Habana, which took place in 1989, and interrogates the ways in which this exhibition extended the global territory of contemporary art and redefined the biennial model.

The third title in the Exhibition Histories series looks at four exhibitions of contemporary art curated by Lucy Lippard, known as her 'numbers shows'. This book follows Lippard’s curatorial trajectory, analysing her transition from a writer about art to a maker of exhibitions, and tracing her growing political engagement and involvement with feminism.

The fourth title in the Exhibition Histories series focuses on ‘Magiciens de la Terre’, an exhibition in Paris in 1989 bringing together over a hundred artists, around half from the ‘West’ and half from elsewhere.

Through a research strand dedicated to exhibition histories, Afterall investigates issues raised by art of the recent past in its becoming public in particular places and times. Featuring keynote presentations first from Samuel Weber and then Annet Dekker, this symposium will enquire into online opportunities within the field of art’s exhibition histories, asking: what sort of sensual and discursive justice might a web platform offer past shows of art, as distinct, perhaps, from the provisions of the printed page? Online examples will be discussed – including Afterall’s own work to date – but the emphasis will lie on addressing some attendant philosophical, digital and political concerns.

We are pleased to announce the fifteenth in our series of talks analysing and contextualising exhibitions through the personal accounts of the curators responsible, co-organised with Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Following on from issue #43 of the Afteralljournal, on Saturday 10 February Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves and museum director Don Genaro Amaro Altamirano will be in conversation with editor and researcher Ana Bilbao discussing Alves’s 2012 project The Return of a Lake. Produced in collaboration with the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, Mexico, The Return of a Lake explored questions of ecology, indigenous land rights and the community museum as a site of resistance.

We are pleased to announce that on Monday 27 November Elena Filipovic will be in dialogue with Lucy Steeds on the subject of artists as curators.

For this event, Filipovic will draw from her recently-published One Work book, David Hammons: Bliz-aard Ball Sale, an unannounced action in which the artist peddled snowballs on the streets of New York in 1983.

Steeds will present and analyse the focus of a book in Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series: ‘an Exhibit’, the maze-like installation built by artists Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore, with the writerly involvement of Lawrence Alloway, first in Newcastle with the help of art students in 1957, before its transfer to the ICA in London.

Uniting these two artistic case studies, and opening up to further examples, Elena and Lucy will debate the history of artists as curators. Specifically, Elena will draw on her work for The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (The MIT Press, 2016) and her edited volume The Artist as Curator (Mousse Publishing, 2017) to which Lucy contributed.

Afterall is uniting with Asia Art Archive, the Paul Mellon Centre and Tate Research Centre: Asia to host a session at the forthcoming annual conference for the UK’s Association for Art History (AAH). Hosted by the Courtauld Institute of Art and King’s College London, this event will run 5 to 7 April 2018.

Join us at the Swiss Institute, at 495 Broadway, 3rd floor, for the first launch of the Exhibition Histories series on 5 November 2010. The launch includes a conversation between Lawrence Weiner, Rafael Ferrer and Keith Sonnier, moderated by Christian Rattemeyer.

In this video essay, Sarah Pierce excerpts four Irish-language television programmes from the 1950s and 60s that complicate Ireland's perception of its past and explore, as she writes, how notions of language, nation, history and territory are constructed.